1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a recording apparatus, a recording system and a dubbing method whereby character information is recorded as auxiliary information to a recording medium such as a magneto-optical disk when main information such as audio data is recorded concurrently to that medium.
2. Description of the Related Art
There exist recording and reproducing apparatuses for recording and reproducing audio data to and from magneto-optical disks exemplified by so-called mini-disks. The magneto-optical disk has a program area that records audio data and a management area that stores table of contents information (U-TOC or user table of contents) for managing the programs recorded in the program area.
The management area containing the table-of-contents information (U-TOC) has a plurality of sectors. A U-TOC sector 0, one of the sectors, retains a start address, an end address, copy protect information and emphasis information about each of the programs recorded in the program area. In the description that follows, the wording "program" will refer to a group of data recorded as a data unit on the disk. For example, a program may be a piece of music (commonly called a track). In such a case, the start address and the end address of a program correspond respectively to the starting and ending positions of a piece of music.
A U-TOC sector 1 holds a title of each of the programs stored in the program area, as well as a title representing the entire magneto-optical disk in question. The title of the entire disk corresponds to information about an album title and names of players or performers if the recorded programs constitute audio data. The title of each program denotes that of a music piece.
A U-TOC sector 2 retains the dates and the times of day at which the programs were recorded in the program area.
A U-TOC sector 4 is arranged to accommodate katakana and kanji characters used as fonts to express the titles of the programs recorded in the program area as well as the title of the entire magneto-optical disk.
The above type of recording apparatus permits inputting character information such as titles representing the programs recorded on the disk. Such character input is accomplished by use of alphabetic keys on a remote controller of the recording apparatus, and/or operation keys, a jog dial or other controls attached to the body of the apparatus.
While audio information constituting a program is being dubbed for recording, a user may input characters denoting the program by operating alphabetic keys or other controls on the remote controller. It may then happen that there are too many characters expressing a program title or the user has taken too much time entering the title, for the character input to be completed before the currently dubbed program is terminated and replaced by the next program.
The input character information is saved as U-TOC data corresponding to the program currently designated by the user for recording, reproduction or temporary halt. Inputting characters during program recording causes the entered characters to be saved as data about the program being recorded. If the current program has ended and is replaced by the next program while the corresponding character input by the user is still in progress, the character input status only halfway complete is set to a U-TOC update memory then and there.
Conventionally, to stop halfway the recording process (typically dubbing) requires performing various control manipulations again. Such manipulations include selection and setting of the current program to be reproduced, execution of a reproduction start operation, setting of an appropriate recording position, and execution of a recording start operation. If it is not clear where the current program has ended and is taken over by the next program, the dubbing process may have to be repeated all over again.
It is thus not desirable for the user to interrupt dubbing halfway and modify the input characters. Where the title name or the like is truncated during its input and saved as such into the memory, it is only after all programs have been dubbed that the user can start correcting the defective entries. This can be a considerable impediment to carrying out dubbing and like recording processes efficiently.